WAR Preview Event Surprises – Some Good. Some Not.

I started the Preview Event (PE) with some well laid plans.  My primary goal was to try the classes I had an interest in playing and select a main character from among them.  I’ve never played the bad or evil side in any MMO not because I need to play a pretty race.  It’s because for whatever reason, the designer’s vision of those racial zones are dirty, poor, creepy and dark, as if evil doesn’t prosper in daylight.  Sure, I get the metaphor but I don’t like those types of zones, not even the heavily shades ones attributed to most elf like races which I do enjoy playing.  I almost always end up running my elf characters to some other starter zone.

In WAR, I wanted to give playing evil another try.  I hoped that their vision of those zones might be broader than what I’ve experiences so far.  To a degree they were.  There was no assumption of poverty or baseness of culture which usually leads to caves and huts, except with the Greenskins, which is a natural visualization of their world.  In fact, the Dark Elf zone was to my tastes and I don’t know if this is a misconception on my part, but I could swear that character had more funds by level 11 than any of the others I played.  And as little as it was, it seemed twice as much coin and gear upgrades.

The classes themselves however, weren’t nearly as interesting to me as I hoped.  The only class I’d consider from the Dark Elf race is the Sorceress which played pretty much as you’d expect a ranged DSP casting class to play.  I had been hoping for something a bit more stylistic. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye later.  As far as the other Destruction classes I had on my checklist list, only the Shaman remains as a candidate.  This is a rather vexing turn of events.

The two shining stars are classes I hadn’t even considered trying at all and from a race I’d scarcely paid any attention to until now, Empire.  The Bright Wizard is quite frankly, the bomb.  It is the only class I’ve played so far that is EXACTLY as cool and pimp as it appears in the cinematic.  Not wanting to play through too much of the BW just in case that becomes my choice, I tried out the Warrior Priest and found another class that I liked very much.  Considering that the Empire starter zone is precisely my favorite type of fantasy zone – farmland and countryside humanoid, this race is leading the pack bar none.  Questing there reminded my of the Goldshire to Westfall trek in WOW.  Entering the first major questing hub was like strolling into a mini Bree from LOTRO.  Having fun in a zone like this is a foregone conclusion for me.

After 1.5 days of the preview:

• I’m unhappy to find that the classes and zones of the faction I really wanted to play don't suit my tastes.  Certainly not Mythic's fault, just my own personal preferences. 
• I'm happy to have found two very compelling classes to play and I'm not done trying them all yet.   
• Overall, I’m less impressed with the graphics than I expected.  So far this is my biggest disappointment.  I don't need realism but the level of crispness and detail I thought I'd see isn't there - yet. 
• I’m encountering very few bugs – almost none other than mob pathing, which plays to my advantage.   

There are a couple of core usability issues I hope will get addressed:

1. One is that the map, while certainly an improvement in features over the bland WOW or EQ2 type map, uses confusing iconography and an unintuitive coloring scheme.
2. The other usability faux pas is that healing classes actually have to select their own avatar in combat to heal themselves, which is just awful!!!  If I don’t have a friendly target selected please apply the ability heal me.  I do realize that even WOW took many many months to include the auto self-casting option.  I can probably compensate with a custom key-binding and/or a macro.  Honestly though, having to consider doing that at level 5 seems rather absurd, especially when you’ve designed melee combat healers! And Age of Conan got that part right so there is no excuse for Mythic.

All-in-all, I’m having a very good time.  I’m not blown away, but I’m confident that I will enjoy playing WAR.  I won’t attempt a detailed review for a while.  There are so many out there already and from players who’ve had considerably more time in the game than I have, so I’ll wait until I’ve played the live release.  After the whole preview is done, I will talk about the things I enjoyed most and least.

Comments

[Nadger]

Its quite hard to judge an entire class based on lvls 1-8 or so. Being a beta tester and having played lvl 40 templated chars, I can safely say some classes dont truely shine with all their uniqueness and glory until higher up. Most of the really cool & unique abilities are high level or you have to specialize to get them.

As to the map, well its not very confusing at all when you can click the little square next to the minimap and see the legend of what all of the icons mean.

Also, the healing behavior you asked for? Its already in game. Im not sure why its not working for you but when I dont have a defensive target, it casts the heal on me. Keep in mind this game allows you to have 2 targets at once. An offensive target, and a defensive target. Benificial spells cast on your defensive target, while offensive ones cast on your offensive target. Im assuming you just had someone else set as your def target nearby and were healing the crap out of them =P

[Scott]

That's poor design then. It may take 20, 40, 60 levels to truly *know* every aspect of a class, but the class itself (indeed, the game itself) should grab you (or not) immediately.

Even WoW did a decent job of that. Get a good idea of what the class is for and how it's basics work, then every 10 levels they hand you some uber skills that make your mental light bulb go off as to how future advancement will work.

I'm very into the *concept* of the Chosen (mostly because its description reminds me of Vanguard's Dread Knight) but I'm not holding my breath that my hopes or (mis?)conceptions will hold true to the reality of the class.

[Saylah]

@Nadger - Well I can't "try" a class to mid level to decide if it's right for me, so the 1 to 10 will have to do. It's what I've done in the past. And no, I was soloing so the only target selected was offensive. I did notice that if I just kept myself selected it worked but otherwise no. In the end, I mapped my self-target to what I'm accustomed to in other games and have to use "slash" to select myself and then heal. I tried this many, many, many times and it doesn't work unless I'm explicitly selected.

@Scott - I've tried a couple of more classes and I'm still finding my strongest affinity is with the Bright Wizard and Warrior Priest. The Shaman feels pretty good too but I want try some RVR with it before making my final judgement.

[JoBildo]

Warrior Priest FTW Saylah.

If we need more of them in CoW I might forgo my White Lion in favor of one.

They're just so... bad ass I believe is the term?

[Solidstate]

> It’s because for whatever reason, the designer’s vision of those racial zones are dirty, poor, creepy and dark, as if evil doesn’t prosper in daylight

Huh? In what game? I've played WoW and seen screenshots of WAR and there is nothing to support what you wrote, except for WoW's The Forsaken, which is 100% in-line with what you would expect for a race of undead... In fact the Blood Elf starting zone and city are anything *but* "dirty, poor, creepy and dark".

[Saylah]

@Solid - Yes, the Foresaken zone is a prime example and that's fine that it's in keeping with the lore. Unfortunately, that fact doesn't induce me to level in them anyway. I wanted and Undead Warlock since day one. I've tried at least four times to roll one after my first main was at max and can't stand the zones so I bail on them.

EQ2 is another example. My first choice for class always was Coercer which is only available in the evil faction. Again, I started there but not only are the zones dirty, dark and dank but the player city and housing is comprised of hovels with rats roaming around. At the time I didnt understand about betraying so I just bailed on the idea and went Summoner . When the EOF expansion released, I rolled a Fae Illusionist and have remained with that class. However, the elf-like race was put into a very pretty but perpetually shaded zone like WOW's NEs, housing and all. Once I realized that i could betray city alignments, I went Qeynos so that I could live in their zones which range from quaint hobbit-like to sprawling human cities.

And anyway, I didn't say my statement was directed at WOW. In the games I've played, I haven't rolled an evil character, even when I was interested in the classes simply because of the look and feel of the zone.

Not sure what screenshots you're speaking of but I've been in the zones myself in WAR. The DE zone looks like an elf zone more evil inspired not poor or dark. The other destruction zones are similar - they just portray that side/race without the whole evil is poverty thing, except for Greenskins. It's hard to explain but it's much more like the LOTRO starter zones. You're in small outlying areas that are in conflict and you immediately see evidence of the conflict - burning buildings, abandoned buildings, militia, injured people, etc.

[Saylah]

@Jobildo - Yes, they are rather bad-ass. I'm wondering if they are considered balanced? It's not possible to tell at these earlier levels. I'd hate to choose an OP class that is going to under-go the knife several times before settling into being in line with the rest of the classes.

I liked the class not because it felt OP but the mechanics were good. It's felt like playing the melee healers in AOC, which is a high compliment to both games. I regard AOC has having the best combat mechanic EVAH! Button-mashing and all, it's the most fun and engaging combat I've experienced to date. And although I didn't my Bear Shaman in AOC past level 30, that class has to go down as one of my all time favorites. I unsubscribed for other reasons - that class rocked.

[Saylah]

@Nadger - Regarding the map. You look at the WOW map a couple of times and you understand it - same with EQ2. The first more interactive map I encountered was LOTRO. I looked at it a couple of times and no problem, you understand it. AOC map took things a few steps further but it still didn't take more than using it a few times if that to be comfortable. Here comes WAR and I constantly have to look and the dang legend to understand it and I'm still running toward the wrong NPC because of the colors. They may not fix it which is fine. A couple of weeks into play and we'll all have it memorized. The fact that I even have to think about it and it's on my mind, raises the possibility that there is a usability issue with their choice of iconography and coloring scheme.